Elte launcher separate from steam ?

Im new, hi.
Im just curious I have the vanilla base game bought from steam..
If I was to buy the season pass from the dev's website can I register and use it on steam along side my steam registered base game..
or would I use the launcher and need to buy the base game from the dev's store page ?

I can buy season pass from steam ... im just curious if both are interchangeable.

Sorry its been a while since I logged in, but my game is steam purchased but due to Windows reinstals and getting the launcher for FD site, and using EDFX, even with the steam path, steam hasnt logged me playing it even when I was playing it.

I would test it bit did a fresh install over the weekend and ED hasnt made its way back onto my pc yet.

I wanted to test if I can run ED without steam running..
When using steam it installs the files including the launcher.. the launcher steam downloads must be tied to steam as when I run it and login steam then starts in the background and sits in the taskbar..

But having just downloaded the launcher from the dev's website.. I ran that and the game played without loading steam..

Both the steam and the dev's launchers are exactly the same, it seems the one steam downloads , as i said, must be tied to steam as steam runs when I use it.
Whereas the devs launcher is pure standalone..

Its not a huge deal to have steam running, i was just curious.
I'll run the dev's launcher from now on anyway as its standalone.
Its not like steam uses a lot of resources.. I just prefer not to use steam if i dont have too.

Make a shortcut to the launcher executable in ~\Steam\steamapps\common\Elite Dangerous\EDLaunch.exe. Move the shortcut to your desktop. Then you can launch from that shortcut and you don't need Steam running.

I have a steam-purchased account (it was a gift) - I don't have Elite installed in Steam, the game is listed in the library window but it is not installed. Instead I just use the direct EDLaunch installed by the download from Frontier. There is no need to have it installed in steam whatsoever.